Tamils

January 19, 2010 -- The refugee issue is almost certain to rise from near invisibility in New Zealand politics to become a strategic battleground. Waves of refugees will be thrown up by the poverty, strife and ecotastrophes of global capitalism's end times.

The right, centre and much of the left in New Zealand politics will
seek to portray these waves of refugees as threats to "our way of
life". This could open the way towards authoritarian nationalism which
jackboots the New Zealand working class as well as offshore refugees.

New Zealand
socialists and our allies must show that offshore refugees are a
resource, not a threat, to the majority of Kiwis under the thumb of
corporate bosses and politicians.

Refugees
are a resource for our side because they are fleeing the poverty, wars
and other calamities caused by the same world system which kicks most
Kiwis around. They are our natural allies against the unnatural forces
of global capitalism.

"Those
who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters
all over the world are our enemies… Our country is really the whole world, and
all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers." -- Fidel Castro.[1]

“The
revolutionary [is] the ideological motor force of the revolution…if he forgets
his proletarian internationalism, the revolution which he leads will cease to
be an inspiring force and he will sink into a comfortable lethargy, which
imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize well. Proletarian
internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. So we
educate our people.” -- Che Guevara.[2]

November 14, 2009 -- I think
that the governments of Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua let down the entire Tamil population
in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as well as “proletarian internationalism” and the “exploited”, by extending unconditional
support to Sri Lanka’s racist government.

October 22, 2009 -- Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Queensland -- In September 2008, the government of Sri Lanka ordered all aid agencies (including
the UN agencies) to leave the ``northern war zone'' -- inhabited by Tamils -- of Sri Lanka. Socialist Alliance member Brian Senewiratne explains the history of Sri Lanka and the attacks on the oppressed Tamil people of the north and east.

Following the Sri Lankan government's war on the Tamil people in 2008, UN
agencies had been delivering food and medical aid to nearly 160,000 internally displaced people (IDPs), i.e. refugees, in the Vanni, the
Tamil area just south of the Jaffna Peninsula. There were 13 aid groups
in the region, providing emergency food aid, clean water and sanitation
to some 200,000 people living in refugee camps and under trees in this
area. All agencies except ICRC, the Red Cross, left. A humanitarian
crisis is now unfolding.

October 22, 2009 -- The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) is concerned for the safety and wellbeing of the 207 Sri
Lankan asylum seekers who are being held at the Immigration Detention
Centre at the Kuala Lumpar International Airport (KLIA), as well as the 108 Sri Lankan
refugees detained at the Pekan Nanas Immigration Detention Centre.

According to our sources, there are 15 women and six children among
the 207 Sri Lankans who were picked up at a road block in Batu Pahat
10 days ago before being transported to the KLIA for detention. Out of
the 108 people detained at Pekan Nenas Immigration Detention Centre,
there are 10 women and 10 children. One of the women is in her eighth
month of pregnancy. It was also reported that the Sri Lankan embassy,
including the deputy high commissioner ,were forcing a group of Sri
Lankan refugees to sign agreements for repatriation. The refugees
refused to sign the agreements and the embassy personnel assaulted them
by beating and kicking them to force them to sign the agreement.

June 21, 2009 -- Socialist Resistance -- The massive demonstration in London on June 20 reflected the
widespread shock and anger of the Tamil diaspora. The key demands that
have to be raised are the right to live in the Tamil homeland, freedom
for internees and political prisoners, and immediate withdrawal of the
army, which is overwhelmingly Sinhalese. These
demands can help refocus a movement focused on the demand for a
ceasefire, and provide an antidote to the retreat of the LTTE
leadership into building a transnational government committee in exile
rather than a real movement.

300,000 children, men and women -- many elderly -- have been interned
in concentration camps. Over 50,000 have been killed or disappeared.
10,000 political prisoners have being held, accused of being Tamil
Tigers, who have no chance to face trial or otherwise be freed.

Democratic Socialist Perspective (Australia)
statement in response to the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka

June 12, 2009 -- The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP)
-- a Marxist organisation affiliated to the Socialist Alliance of Australia -- supports the right of Tamils to self-determination. We have campaigned in
solidarity with the Tamil people for several decades. For example, at the
time of the 1983 massacre the DSP worked with the Tamil community in Australia to organise protests. This year
too, the DSP, Socialist Alliance and Resistance worked closely with Tamil
communities, including helping organise rallies, to highlight the calls for a
ceasefire and for self-determination.

June 3, 2009 -- Ever
since Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) gained independence from Britain
in 1948, the basic rights of the Tamil minority have been under attack.

The
ruling elite from the Sinhala majority have found anti-Tamil racism an
extremely convenient device to secure their power and privilege and
deflect discontent from below. The history of Sri Lanka is marked by a
shameful and bloody series of government-instigated anti-Tamil pogroms.

Tamils demand national self-determination on May 1, 2009. Photo by Peter Boyle.

By the Socialist Party of Malaysia (Parti Sosialis Malaysia, PSM)

May 27, 2009 -- Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared victory over Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as the last LTTE strongpoints crumbled. The victory is for no one but only the chauvinistic nationalist Sinhalese government led by Rajapaksa, which had launched a brutal, merciless and cold-blooded military offensive against the Tamil population for several months, inflicting nothing but death, destruction and misery. The victory proclaimed by Rajapaksa will not put an end to the conflict that has lasted for several decades, but signals a new assault on working people in Sri Lanka -- Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim.

On May 23, 2009, anti-war activists joined members of Sydney's Tamil community in a march to protest the Sri Lankan
government's war against the Tamil people, organised by
the Stop The War Coalition.

* * *

By Reihana Mohideen

May 21, 2009 -- “To save the lives of our people is the need of the hour. Mindful of this, we have already announced to the world our position to silence our guns to save our people", said Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the head of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) International Diplomatic Relations on May 17, thus flagging the military defeat of the LTTE.

May 21, 2009 -- According to an announcement by the Sri Lankan government, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Prabhakaran is dead, killed by the Lankan Army. The LTTE is yet to confirm the death, and some sections are questioning the veracity of the claim.

The exact manner of Prabhakaran's death is clouded in suspicion. The Sri Lankan government claims he was killed when the army opened fire on a van in which he and two top aides were travelling; initially, Sri Lankan officials said the van caught fire under rocket attack and Prabhakaran's body was badly burnt. Subsequently, they claimed to have found his body, dead from a bullet, dressed in fatigues and having identification papers on him, during a combing operation. There are many unanswered questions about the manner of the death: including the suspicion that he might have been captured alive by the Lankan army, or that he might have taken his life before capture.

There is an international commotion about the bloodbath and the human disaster in Lanka. It can lead eventually to an international intervention that could enslave everybody. We called this press conference to make everybody aware of the developing situation.

May 11, 2009 -- A shameful spectacle of opportunism is being played out in Indian politics even as Sri Lanka is waging a chilling ``final solution'' to its Tamil national question. In the name of a war to eliminate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Mahinda Rajapakse's regime in Sri Lanka is waging war on the Tamil people. Independent observers, international rights groups and even journalists have been prohibited from covering the reality of the war. Conservative estimates, trickling through, put civilian deaths at a minimum of 5000, including at least 500 children, since January. At least 100,000 civilians are estimated wounded. The Sri Lankan army is using cluster bombs and chemical warfare in blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions. Tens of thousands of innocent Tamils are caught up in the war zone, starved of food, water and medicine. Some 100,000 others, fleeing in desperation are being rounded up behind barbed wire fences in ``camps'', where by all accounts they will be kept under detention for three years. Sri Lankan journalists questioning their government's brutal policy have been silenced by assassination and arrest. International journalists reporting on the detention camps for Tamil civilians have been detained and deported.

May 7, 2009 -- Socialist Alliance (Australia) -- I am a Sinhalese from the majority community in Sri Lanka, not from
the brutalised Tamil community. I have campaigned for some five decades
for the right of the Tamils to live with equality, dignity and safety
in the country of their birth.

I am releasing this media briefing as a concerned Australian (here
for 32 years), and as a member of the Socialist Alliance, the only
non-Tamil organisation [in Australia] to support the struggle of the Tamils for
justice.

April 25, 2009 -- The Sri Lankan government claims to be on the verge of totally defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE — also known as the Tamil Tigers). The LTTE has fought for more than 30 years for an independent state for the Tamil people on the northern and eastern parts of the island.

The roots of the conflict lie in a long history of state-sponsored
oppression of the Tamils, which eventually led some Tamil youth to take
up arms. When the British granted independence to Sri Lanka in 1948, power
was handed to politicians drawn mainly from the upper classes of the
majority Sinhala ethnic group. These politicians used racism as a tool to divide the working class.

Second-class citizens

Tamil plantation workers were deprived of citizenship rights. Sinhalese
was declared the sole official language of Sri Lanka, making Tamil
language speakers second-class citizens. Knowledge of Sinhalese became
necessary for public service jobs, excluding most Tamils. Discrimination was also applied in education.

April 24,
2009 -- The media’s poll pundits have already declared
that there are “no issues” in India’s 2009 parliamentary
polls. At the same time, the corporate media houses have launched campaigns seeking
to ``awaken’’ middle- and upper-class voters. They have been awash in
self-congratulation at their success in mobilising this class of voters – the
only class, they imply, which is capable of making Indian politics clean and
meaningful, because it is not a ``vote bank’’. ``Slumdogs’’, they rue, are even
willing to sell their kids, so their votes are suspect – while sheer wealth
places corporates and crorepatis above
corruption.

[India’s Lok Sabha (national
lower house of parliament) polls, are being held in five phases between
April 16 and May 13, 2009.]

8000 Australian Tamils and supporters protest in Canberra, April 18, 2009.

The following editorial appeared in Green Left Weekly issue #791, April 22, 2009.

April 18, 2009 -- One of the great crimes of modern times is occurring on the island of Sri Lanka without a word of protest from governments the world over. The Tamil people are facing genocide.

Already this year, the death toll of Tamil civilians exceeds 4000.
Often dozens, and in some cases hundreds, are slaughtered in a single
day in Sri Lankan Army bombings of the so-called safe zone, into
which as many as 300,000 people are crowded.

Those Tamils who flee this zone are being placed into concentration camps by the Sri Lankan Army.

This brutal reality is almost entirely unreported, and not simply
because the Sri Lankan government refuses to allow journalists access
to the scene of its crime. Instead, the mainstream media is once again
siding with the powerful.

January 23, 2009 -- There is a humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil minority in the island’s north and east are facing annihilation at the hands of the Sinhalese-dominated government.

This article will deal with the current crisis, with the more
fundamental problem of the legacy left by colonial British rule
(1796-1948) dealt with in later articles. These colonial administrative
structures will need to be reversed of there is ever to be peace or
prosperity in Sri Lanka.

I am a Sinhalese, from the majority community, not from the brutalised Tamil minority. I quit Sri Lanka in 1976.

Who runs that country is of no concern to me, as long as it is run
without serious violations of human rights. Sri Lanka was tossed out of
the UN Human Rights Council in May last year due to its human rights
record, and the drift of a democracy to a fascist politico-military
dictatorship, none of which have been publicised internationally.